Friedman Prize For Outstanding Graduate Students

The Friedman Prize

Dr. Yossi Friedman, son of Mina and the late Asher Friedman, was born and
educated in Beer Sheva. He started his studies at the Department of
Mathematics and Computer Science (at the time a single department) at Ben
Gurion University as a young school boy (see below his description of the
experience) where he received his B.Sc. degree with high honours. He
then went on to receive his Ph.D. degree in Computer Science at Stanford
University in California. Upon graduation he was approached by investment
companies and since the mid 1990’s he has been working in this capacity.
He is now a partner in Millenium partners, a well-known New York
investment company.

Dr. Friedman has contributed to the Center of Advanced Studies in Mathematics
at Ben Gurion University, and part of his donation is directed towards an
annual prize for outstanding graduate students in the Mathematics department.

Here are Dr. Friedman’s words at the Friedman prize ceremony of April 30,
2007:

The expression “Girsa Dyankuta” comes from Aramaic, and literally means
the things that a person learned in his childhood. The deeper meaning of
the expression is that the knowledge, wisdom, and understanding that a
person absorbs as a child are deeply impressed on his soul and accompany
him for life. Ben-Gurion University is my “Girsa Dyankuta”. When I was
born in Beer-Sheva, at the Soroka Medical Center, across from the
hospital was a large sandy lot peppered with thorns. At that time,
Ben-Gurion University was scattered around several locations, and only
several years later were the first buildings erected on the site where
the campus is today.

When I was in the fourth grade, about nine or ten years of age, I
underwent achievement tests, along with many of the schoolchildren of
Beer-Sheva, and my parents received a letter stating that, as an
“above-average” pupil, I was invited to participate in special enrichment
courses for schoolchildren at the university. I knew these courses were
worthwhile, because my sister, who is four years older than I, had been
invited to participate in them several years earlier and had been very
excited about them. And, like everything else that my sister did, I
wanted to do the same. She was interested in the life sciences. I was
afraid of blood, so I chose the computer course. At the time this course
seemed futuristic and fascinating, like Jules Verne’s science fiction.

When I arrived at the course, in the computation center, which
contained only one computer that required special climactic
conditions, it seemed even more fantastic than science fiction. We,
the pupils in the course, ran around the center, mingling with the
university students, not just on the days of the course, but every
day. There was ten-year-old Dror, who came every day by himself from
the town of Kiryat Gat on the bus, and later became a professor at
Harvard. There was Victor, the new immigrant from the Soviet Union, and
me, and other “computer freaks” like us.

The university loved us, the little “freaks”, and allowed us to come
and go as we pleased. It gave us computer time and access to
lecturers and researchers, and helped us to develop intellectual
curiosity and to look for solutions. So much so, that on several
occasions my Dad had to come to the computation center to get me at
midnight, wearing a sweater over his pajamas, because I’d lost track
of time.

When I began high school, it was the Department of Mathematics and
Computer Sciences that offered me a chance to take courses as a
regular university student while I was still a high school pupil.
There were teachers at my high school who were not pleased with this,
and who saw it as a personal insult to them, and the university came
through by allowing me to be absent from lectures that overlapped
with these teachers’ lessons.

And so it happened that shortly after I matriculated from high
school, I received my bachelor’s degree in Mathematics and Computer
Sciences. With the recommendation of my lecturers at BGU, I was
accepted into a PhD program at Stanford University, and with the “Girsa
Dyankuta” from BGU, I became a partner in an investment firm in New York.
I live in a beautiful apartment and enjoy a good life. But I always
remember the “incubator” of my ambitions and their fulfillmen — where
they believed in me and treated me like an intelligent adult when I was
still a small child. That is my “Girsa Dyankuta”, and probably that of
many others as well.

Prize Winners

2003

Dr. Guy Cohen, for his Ph.D. thesis: Parameter
Estimation of Random Fields, under the
supervision of Prof. Michael Lin and Prof. Yossi Francos.

Dr. Yossi Moshe, for his Ph.D thesis on
Combinatial Number Theory, under the supervision
of Prof. Danny Berend.

2004

Dr. Victoria Lubich, for her Ph.D. thesis: The
Application of Shelah's PCF Theory to General Topological
Properties, under the supervision of Prof. Menahem
Kojman.

Dr. Viatcheslav Bikov, for his Ph.D. thesis:
Problems of Applied Mathematics and Their Application to
Combustion Theory, under the supervision of Prof.
Vladimir Goldstein.

2005

Mr. Andrey Melnikov, for his M.Sc. thesis:
Overdetermined 2D systems invariant in one direction and
their transfer functions, under the supervision of
Prof. Victor Vinnikov.

2006

Mr. Noam Solomon, for his M.Sc. thesis:
Elliptic $p$-adic polylogarithms and arithmetic
applications under the supervision of Prof. Amnon
Besser.

2007

Mr. Ilya Goldstein, for his M.Sc. thesis:
Group Substitutions under the supervision of
Prof.
Daniel Berend.

2008

Mr. Lior Fishman, for his M.Sc. thesis:
Schmidt's Game and the Intersection of Badly Approximable
Linear Forms with Fractals prepared under the
supervision of Prof. Barak Weiss.